When to Prune Fruit Trees?

Fruit tree pruning can generally be carried out in winter, spring or summer, depending on what your end goal is.

Winter Pruning

Mainly for apples, pears and quince. Winter pruning encourages vigorous growth. So if you want new shoots, and more flowers and therefore fruits, prune in winter. Pruning at this time of year, when the leaves have fallen, gives you a chance to see the overall shape and structure of your tree.

Spring & Summer Pruning

Mainly for stone fruits or if your tree is too big, and you don’t want to encourage vigorous growth. Also good for trained apples and pears.

It doesn’t trigger the tree into producing lots of new growth so it’s good for trees you want to keep small and for dwarf trees. It’s also a chance to remove diseased or dead wood.

Because spring and summer pruning is carried out after the tree has started to develop fruits (known as setting fruits), you can avoid cutting the branches with fruits on.

Autumn Pruning

It’s better to avoid autumn pruning as this can stimulate new growth at a time when the tree is getting ready to go into dormancy.

Ash dieback, also known as Chalara dieback of ash, is a serious disease that is killing ash across Europe. Ash is a very important tree in the UK both ecologically and culturally so this disease is causing great concern about the damage it will do.

Symptoms

Dark lesions – often long, thin and diamond-shaped – appear on the trunk at the base of dead side shoots

The tips of shoots become black and shrivelled

Blackened, dead leaves – may look a bit like frost damage

The veins and stalks of leaves, normally pale in colour, turn brown

Saplings have dead tops and side shoots

In mature trees, dieback of twigs and branches in the crown, often with bushy growth further down the branches where new shoots have been produced

In late summer and early autumn (July to October), small white fruiting bodies can be found on blackened leaf stalks.

Causes

The disease is spread by spores from the fruiting bodies of the fungus produced on fallen ash leaves. These airborne spores can disperse naturally via wind over tens of kilometres

Prior to the ban in October 2012 on the movement of ash trees, spread over longer distances was likely to have been via the movement of infected ash plants.

Outlook

The disease is spread by spores from the fruiting bodies of the fungus produced on fallen ash leaves. These airborne spores can disperse naturally via wind over tens of kilometres

Prior to the ban in October 2012 on the movement of ash trees, spread over longer distances was likely to have been via the movement of infected ash plants

We don’t know what the full impact of ash dieback will be. Evidence suggests young trees are killed quickly while many mature ash trees can resist infection for some time until eventually dying or becoming weakened and succumbing to attack from another pest or pathogen.

Scientists have developed techniques to identify individual trees that are less susceptible to ash dieback disease, this technique combined with resistance breeding trials, can be used to grow trees that are more likely to survive the disease.